Entropy is an expression of the universe and is perpetually combatted by all living beings. Humanity expresses a distinct technique combatting entropy through work and technology, but also expresses unique behavior. This behavior manifests fundamentally as an energetic excess, and is strikingly apparent through religious impulse.Art springs from the same energetic excess as religion, in that art and religion is unnecessary for pragmatic survival. The drive for humans to incessantly innovate new technologies also appears as an energetic excess, but is different in that it is necessary for survival.A conflict occurs that once technology augments our mode of existence, it creates new entropic forces. As an artist using DIY and open-source technologies, I aim to create work that is innovative, catastrophic, blissful, and redemptive in order to reflect this energetic excess. In short, I aim for my work to be an end in itself, while reflecting the entropy of the universe and the entropy of being a living human.

A post shared by Abe King (@abekingvideo) on May 6, 2019 at 1:54pm PDT

Introduction

My interest in working with technology stems from the fact that I live in a technocratic society. The sounds of engines, industry, music over the internet, streaming videos…my existence, along with everyone else in this relative time and place, is perpetually mediated. Technology is symbiotically related to being human, and its evolution addresses our needs and desires. The internet, software, electricity, the automobile, speed, are technologies and forces that are a part of my day to day existence, and therefore a part of my consciousness. So to better understand myself, my temporal-cultural paradigm, and grow in areas of knowledge of being human, working with technology(the means), for art(the end), is vital to expressing myself and knowing myself as a human being.

There are many unexplored territories with media and technology that are barely being realized. Curiosity beckons me to answer what certain combinations of sensorial data could be combined, juxtaposed, and expressed as an artistic experience. How I justify what is an artistic experience depends on the proposition that art is an end in and of itself. It is to express the act of consummation, similar to a religious experience, or the sexual act. Techne, the etymological root word of “technology”, is the method to do or make something, usually associated with utility. Therefore, my goal is to communicate the act of consummation, entropy, and sacrifice of technology, the techne that symbolize technocratic culture.

Everything Falls Apart

When we view the world before us, and we observe the computers, roads, lights, and abundance of technocratic noise, we ask ourselves how did we get here? If technology comes from humans, what socio-political force, or characteristic of being human, beckons the growth of tech? Is it the economics in capitalism that pressure us to innovate to the next techno-cultural norm? Or is there an entropic pressure of the universe, in which humans are caught, and the best chance of surviving is to innovate through this universal pressure?

What is entropy and where does it exist? The logic of society is that entropy deals with vice, death, chaos, and disorder. When something doesn’t function properly it must be fixed. When someone is sick they must seek out a doctor to make them healthy. When a loved one dies, they must be mourned. Even if we could rationalize and say that entropy is a virtue, we would need to ignore our rational, and continue to fight against it through instinct, because there is only one way to survive, and that is through fighting the inevitable: entropy.

Entropy, the default state of the universe, where everything falls apart, is enigmatic in its own right. Where Nature has her ebb and flow, things that live die, and things that die give life to new forms. As far as our perspective can see, nothing lasts forever. The best that we can do as we are caught in Nature’s web, is work to stay on the “right” side of the cycle. This means that as forces external to us threaten to end life, we must do everything within our power to prolong life.

It makes sense then, that we would do better to team up and work together as a society. It makes sense to develop specialized techniques such as agriculture that would allow societies to grow to a complex, hierarchical organizations.(0) A civilization enables other specialized techniques, such as medicine, engineering, and artisans to develop. The discipline of medicine is simple to understand its necessity; everyone eventually will suffer some sort of illness or injury within their lifetime, and a specialized practice of medicine has proven more efficient to overcome this. Therefore, the credo of civilization is this: All hands on deck to combat observable forms of entropy! But is perpetually combatting entropy advantageous, or can it lead to undesirable consequences, becoming a force of entropy in and of itself? Is it possible that entropy, rather than perpetually combatted, can be understood as a consummated experience?What is the intent and thought process for such an experience? I aim to analyze these questions through different perspectives from prehistory to modernity.

Pre-Civilization, Beyond Utility, Relating to Entropy

The first tools, the first technology, made by humans’ evolutionary predecessor was 3.3 million years ago. (1) This is significant, though not uniquely human, as other animals use tools from the environment to better survive and combat entropy. (2)But why are humans the only species to find special significance in objects beyond utility? And what is it about this evolutionary period of humans relationship with objects of a sacred value that enables more complex abstract thought to evolve?Was there some sort of psychic evolutionary excess that drove humans to indulge, create, and collect non-utilitarian objects? Or was it the ownership of these sacred possessions, that spurred abstract thought?

The first objects of non-utilitarian value, was bone and shell jewelry, dating back to 100,000 years ago. (3) As these small communities were nomadic, wearing these objects of value makes sense considering that ownership too many possessions could be a burden. It is problematic to assume the meaning behind these non-utilitarian objects that would be worn, as their view of the world was most likely very different from ours. But if the genealogy of modern human behavior must spring from somewhere, then how much different could our world view differ at the most fundamental level from our earliest ancestors?

An important signifier of the potential sacredness of these objects is that they last through time, expressing that the sacred world is the only permanent, and the banal world temporary and entropic. “Like all small treasures, each object was unique and possessed its own spiritual power, life force, and spirit, instantiating whole ancestral lineages: that they are ancestral efficacy and power in specific form, rather than merely representing or carrying these concepts.”(4) Shells, bone, tusks, and eventually precious metals, welded into highly prized objects, signify the overcoming of decay and entropy. So a very important characteristic we can understand human’s early object sanctity is that longevity of these objects create sacred value. This makes sense considering the idea of early humans becoming aware of their death: that objects/materials that last through decay have a persistent value to generations to come and to existence. Therefore a sacred value could be attributed to these kinds of life remains.

These early art collectors would wear their jewelry as magical talisman, mating display, and social status.(3) This social status is significant in understanding the establishment of hierarchy; those with more jewelry, finer jewelry, objects that wouldn’t decay, were more human, less animal. Those with less jewelry were more animal, less human. (5) It’s important to point out that its likely these early humans didn’t see themselves as better than the animal kingdom, but rather separate from being animal. This relates to setting up taboos on who is permitted to take part in what rite, what form of transgression, such as the sexual rite, which in turn is to reproduce. The higher up the social ladder, the finer jewelry, the more divine, the more wealth, the less animal, the more human.

Notably, there could have been other rituals, or objects that decomposed that could have predated objects of artistic/religious impulse of early humans. Such as that the oldest musical gestures may have begun with the sounds of social song, which evolved to music making of a religious kind in which it is possible that rhythms of a society were formed. But to date, thanks to radio-carbon dating, we can only speculate upon the known artifacts found and the empirical evidence at our disposal. So regarding music, the first musical instruments, objects especially designated to make musical gestures, sonic gestures outside the realm of pragmatic communication and working day to day, is the bone flute, made 40,000 years ago (6)

Around this same time and in a similar location in Germany is the oldest known figurative artwork. The Lion-man, or Löwenmensch figurine, also from 40,000 years ago, was found in the Stadel cave in southern Germany. The unique location in the cave where this figurine was found, signify a special value that was different from objects of utility.

“The Löwenmensch figurine lay in a chamber almost 30 meters from the entrance of the Stadel cave and was accompanied by many other remarkable objects. Bone tools and worked antlers were found, along with jewelry consisting of pendants, beads, and perforated animal teeth. The chamber was probably a special place, possibly used as a storehouse or hiding-place, or maybe as a ritual-worshiping place centered on the mysterious lion man.…In any case, the fantastic representation of the lion man as a unique relic refers to the spiritual world of the people of the last ice age, even though we can no longer decrypt their complex world view.(7)

Thus, the evidence and location of the Lion-Head figurine signifies the evolutionary relevance of art collection that exists today, especially considering an aura, or sacredness to these objects.

My point with bringing up human’s first impulse to designate objects that are set apart from the banal world, the world of the day to day, is that it is a religious impulse. It is aimed to come in communion with the world of the sacred by idolizing objects that last through Nature’s entropic forces.But objects that hold sacred value because that are anti-entropic may be too simplified an interpretation. There could be deeper layers of nuance attributing to this religious impulse that could signify an embracing of entropy, rather than a wholehearted struggle against it. A more clear example of these layers of nuance are illustrated through sacrifice.

Animal and human sacrifice has been executed through many different cultures through many different times. It is a violent act, an entropic act, upon a living being, not for pragmatic survival, but in order to come in contact with the world of the sacred, the world of entropy (0a).These sacrificial rituals are only executed for religious purposes, it is an experiential act of consummation, of sublimating the inherent entropic force of life. We witness this sublimation going beyond the purpose of utility, as an acknowledgement of universal decay, the world of the sacred, of entropy, that encompasses all life.

To Now

In the modern era we witness a kind of new beginning of how the tools and technology developed has greatly changed the way we humans live in and perceive our reality.Modern humans’ reality is a juxtaposition between the natural world and the technocratic world. Technology, by creating a world of greater logistical efficiency and utility, and therefore combatting entropy, emphasizes that it is an augmented reality. For example, the invention of the wheel can be thought of as a new way for humans to interface with the world in an augmented fashion. Every new innovation and technological evolution brings an augmented experience in the contemporary time period that it is wielded, and it enhances new methods of observation, interactivity, measurement, and insight to understanding our perceptual possibilities in the universe.

As we humans augment our experience of reality we build a new type of existence. Language, symbols, and technologies become symbiotically intertwined within our modes of survival. Observe: to own a smartphone and car is not truly a matter of life or death, but to possess any leverage in the modern world, it is necessary to thrive. But how did this happen? How did this augmentation into a necessary means of survival in the modern paradigm of civilization? I believe it is because we as humans are a kind of animal lacking in physical advantages, and in order to overcome entropic forces that threatened our existence, an excess of energy was needed in the evolution of consciousness: rational thought, cause and effect (rather than an infinite “becoming”), linear progression of time (rather than a cyclic), and certain myths and stories to narrate our place of where we’ve come from and where we’re going. This type of rational thought, this type of excess energy, feeds on its own logic, perpetually seeks resolution, but comically returns unprecedented conflict.

This excess energy, this augmented reality, this sublimating force to rationalize and engineer more powerful means to combat entropy brings us to our modern, technocratic existence. Stasis is death, stasis is an entropic force. To combat stasis is to act, to transport, to communicate, to overcome space as a barrier, to overcome entropy. But now in our high speed, high fueled, perpetually mediated existence, we are faced with a paradox: The surge of high speed creates new risks of entropic catastrophes. So as we combat entropy with new technology, we create new complex entropic forces in and of themselves.

For example, nuclear energy produces electricity. Consequently, nuclear energy yields nuclear waste, which is hazardous for thousands of years. Next is to understand the accident, as in the case of Chernobyl and Fukashima (0b), the meltdown of nuclear energy, poisoning the environment around. Then we must analyze the weaponry of nuclear energy; the bomb. And finally we must acknowledge social control, Baudrillard’sslow implosion, the mediated fear of nuclear war.

Let me elaborate a bit more on our entropic paradox which manifests on different layers. Modern society’s pursuit for a standard of living is highly combative of Nature’s entropic forces, demanding light when dark, warmth when cold, space to be traversed at greater speeds, and overall desires to be met by a growing population having more access to resources, energy, and technology.This standard of living requires an exorbitant amount of strain on the environment. This manifests as waste sites, pollution, climate change, and other issues that express entropy.

The next layer to analyze in our modern perspective is the Accident. The efficiency of speed, being able to transcend space with technology such as the automobile. But in 2016 alone, over 40,000 people died in automobile accidents,(8) a large number above average, and the speculation why has to do with drivers being distracted by their smartphones. Hence, the accidents caused by living in high speeds in conjunction with the elaborate communication device as the smartphone,redeems itself as highly entropic.

The Nuanced Layers of Entropy: Humanity

So far I’ve been describing entropy as which it is observed externally; a force or power outside of us, as if we are some innocent victim of this force, trying the best to our abilities to combat it. But in reality, depending on the vantage point, we are an agent of it. Entropy is an inherent force, spilling out violently from our existence. The entropy of a person is exercised in various ways, whether as a productive member of an industrial capitalist society striving to accumulate more resources to enhance their standard of living, as a criminal, preying on the basic rights of other people, exploiting their vulnerabilities, or as a governing body, organizing the boundaries of crime and punishment for a group of people. So how do we further analyze this inherent entropic force?

Georges Bataille, in his work “The Accursed Share”, talks about how when living beings reach a certain level of survival, there becomes an intensity caused by an excess of energy, which causes a crisis in the being, to either spend this energy or to catastrophically collapse from it. Bataille attributes this excess energy as fundamentally erotic, and in turn this excess energy is either squandered or sublimated. Bataille goes on through his work on how erotism is manifested in many forms, such as sexual transgression, crime and punishment, religious festivals, ritual sacrifice, and mystical experience.

All living beings express an entropic force. Life feeds on life, and the predator provokes entropy upon the prey. From this we observe entropy as a form of violence. But it is only humanity that takes this violence beyond pragmatic survival to an exaggerated level. The most straightforward example of this is warfare. War is an entropic force expressed by a group of people and combatted by a group of people: “Them trying to kill us, so we must kill them first.” Fighting fire with fire, entropy with entropy. The moral motive for war is to villainize the enemy and glorify the cause. The pragmatic rational to invade is the need for more resources and more energy. But the truth of war, at least according to Bataille, and in which I agree, is that it is an erotic expression of Man(war is definitely more expressed as male energy). It is the excessive violent energy that is over abundant and must be squandered and spent, in which is expressed as warfare.

Slow Entropic forces of Social Control

The governing body of any civilization, the authority that dictates the ebb and flow of its civilians, is founded on the extreme violence of warfare. Once the war is won, the victor’s moral laws become imposed on the people that compose the society. We live in a democracy which idealizes that government should not be imposed, but willed by the people that inhabit it. Yet through theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, we can critique our contemporary democracy with a more skeptical eye of scrutiny. In his work “Signs and Simulacrum”, he writes of a simulation, where social control is transmitted through media-technological channels that express the appearance of reality, but is in fact a fabrication. A specific example he describes is a “slow implosion”, in which the fear of nuclear war, the mediation with anxiety as a perpetual threat, keeps the social order taught with deterrence. This is an entropic force of nuance exacerbated upon the people of the democracy.

Empowerment of Artists

The greatest leverage possessed by contemporary artists is that the aesthetics of entropy, or the fight against entropy, has become inverted. Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”,the ready-made urinal, opened the possibilities to what art could be. It mocked the paradigm that art had to be created from technical mastery of the artist, in which years of work, labor, technique, and the heroic conquering of entropy is what amounted to great art. Art could now exist as anything and from anything. From here on artists became no longer a collaborative agent of civilization’s fight against entropy, but rather entropy became an ally, a fundamental tool (or anti-tool) for artists to critique the ethics and aesthetics of contemporary society.

Consider the Dadaists, the art movement that Duchamp was a part of, as response to the aftermath of WWI. What happened with the civilization of the world at this time? The industrial revolution seemed to grant a greater standard of living for those who could acquire the technology. But what should have been a step in the direction towards a global utopia, had the reverse effect; no images seen at the time seemed to express global dystopia as the images of WWI.Nonetheless, the images of poisoned environment from chemical warfare, the machine gun, trench warfare, no-man’s land, all these horrific consequences from the technologies of war. How could artists not address this outcome with a critical expression such as the Dadaists? Humanity seemed to have taken a step in the wrong direction. The promise of greater stability against Nature’s entropic forces due to industrial technology caused the greatest entropic outcome ever seen by the world up until that time. What a tragic outcome! Therefore the Dadaists used chaos, absurdness, and nonsensicalness as a critical response to the aftermath of WWI. Artists now could employ entropy as a creative expression.

Since the Dadaists of the beginning of the 20th century, we witness many artists and movements that continue to employ entropy. A few examples: Jean Tingluey’s “Homage to New York”, 1960, a kinetic-sculpture that destroyed itself over the course of 27 minutes.Painter John Baldessari, “Cremation Project”, incineratedall his paintings he had created the 13 years prior, in 1970.“Fluids”, by Alan Kaprow, the pioneer of Happenings, had a group of people build structures made of ice cubes that upon completion, melted into nothingness. Though the concepts for artists vary, from personal, to political, to meta-philosophical, entropy in contemporary art has become a valuable ally in how artists express themselves.

Blissful Catastrophe of DIY

“Open source” is a decentralized model that encourages open collaboration meant for developing software. It began in the late 1990s springing out of the “free software” movement, founded by Richard Stallman (0c). Over the last twenty years it has been adopted by many academics, businesses, and project developers to share and collaborate with anyone willing. Whether, coincidentally, or by happenstance, this model has spread throughout other media channels over the internet, spilling into the ethos of “Doing It Yourself”. Any hack one wants to learn is possible from such video tutorials on Youtube, from fixing one’s car, to getting their Raspberry Pi computer up and running, to learning techniques in cinematography. The world is tipping with advances, thanks to the open-source ethos, in machine learning, computer vision, parallel computing, block-chain technology, and as a new-media artist the possibilities are near infinite when imagined as what cinematic-sonic-performative capabilities can be achieved. If the medium is the message then how do I build this new medium of decentralized collaboration for artwork that employs entropy for a consummated experience?

The fundamental hurdle of DIY is the inexperience of doing something new. This inexperience leads to more encounters with failure, and at a deeper level, entropy. I’m returned with errors in my programming, motors break, wired incorrectly, everything that can go wrong will go wrong.On one hand, as an artist, I feel there is a pressure to express a certain degree of mastery over my craft. But mastery of technique and craft is antithesis to the ethos of the Dadaists and the contemporary art movements that have followed. So the natural entropic feedback of DIY, as an inexperienced “Doer”, ought to serve as the aesthetic expression throughout my work.

My first inspiration was to use architect Frank Gehry’s residence in Santa Monica. He used common building materials such as chain link fence, metal siding, and unfinished wood as the facade for certain sections of his home, expressing the DIY ethos. In an interview he said it best:

“ …the guy across the street with the trailer, with the corrugated fence, and the car on the lawn, came across one day and stood there, said,

‘What the hell is this house all about?’

and I say, “I’m just relating to you.”

‘Yea, but I’m normal’.” (9)

What is “normal” is to see process as process, not as a finished product. Therefore, what is entropic is to see process as finished, because in the grand scheme of things, what is ever finished? Regarding the laws of entropy, everything is in process. To desire a “finished, clean” product is arbitrary, foolhardy to say the least.But the difference I have with Gheary’s residence, is that my work is not a suburban home. I am a new media artist aiming for viewers to experience entropy as a sublimated experience. So where do I go from here?

Engage the Body

Thinking about new-media and expanded cinema I want to explore the idea of embodiment. The contemporary design of media technology is disembodiment, where the body is passive while absorbing the visual images. Because of this, the direction of designing media players is to compress this technologyphysically smaller until it is non-existent, in which media interface will exist as implants in our brains, ear canals, and extensions of our eyes. An example that we see this is with artist/technologist Steve Mann. Predating Google Glass by decades, Mann surgically attached a small camera to his skull covering one of his eyes (0d). Though very progressive and interesting, it idealizes the design of disembodiment, in which our consciousness will no longer be imprisoned to our bodies. But is this ideal? Is entropy synonymous with our bodies? My goal as an artist is to create an experience of the consummation of entropy, not to overcome it. Therefore the engagement of the body is imperative.

The fundamental medium I work with is sound and video. Over the years of practicing various methods and techniques, the overall experience of cinema depends on the environment in which it is viewed. Early in twentieth century, cinema could only be viewed in theaters with the viewer sitting and gazing at the big screen. Since the advent of video art, then home video, then the smart phone, there is no limit as to where or when one can experience cinema. If cinema can be experienced at anytime and anyplace, thanks to advances in media technology (combatting entropy), then how can I extrapolate the ergonomics of cinematic devices with the body?

The ergonomics of man-machine interface dictates how much the technology combats entropy. If the technology is too awkward to use, or too entropic, it fails in becoming useful. I would argue that this is why passive, disembodied technologies have more impact as a way to combat entropy: ease of use.So utilizing the work of George Stratton, experimental psychologist of the twentieth century who was the first to experiment with upside down goggles(10), I wanted to express the idea of embodiment of man-machine interface. In which the body must be engaged to experience the mediated devices as expanded cinema.

Installation

My installation will consist of three movable machines and three colored triggers. The theme of the show will be Entropy, the struggle against it, and the expression of it. This will be enacted through sacrifice of machines, transgression of utility, and communion of industrial and digital technology. The aesthetic goal of is that of a junkyard; waste, abandonment, catastrophe, recycle, order, chaos. The movable machines will vary in degree of ergonomic embodiment, from simple to complex.

The first of the three movable machines will be an appropriated wheel barrow. This will be the most ergonomically simple. There is a projector at one end of the wheel, projecting onto a rear projection screen in front of the viewer/driver. There is a usb camera pointing outward, running into a NUC (Next Unit of Computing), a powerful computer the size of a hand. The computer will be running OpenCV, open source computer vision,in the Python programming language tracking color intensities. When either red, green, or blue is detected, a corresponding video with audio will blend into the screen and speakers. There will be three separate videos that will run on each dynamic machine. The video will have diegetic, rhythmic sound of the video when one of the colors is triggered, but if no color is triggered, it will output granulated, abrasive sound.

This will be accomplished with a granular buffer run on SuperCollider programming language. The frame rate from the video feed on Python will send OSC (Open Sound Control) messages locally on the same computer from Python to SuperCollider, which will dictate the granular frequency of the WAV buffer. So, for example, if the frame rate of the video is 24 fps, the grain frequency will also advance through the WAV buffer at 24 grains per second. This will ensure the sound and video to always be in sync, regardless if frames drop, latency, or other timing issues happen.All three dynamic machines will have the same software design, will be battery powered, output through amplifier and speaker, and portray similar themes through cinema.

The next movable machine will be more ergonomically complex then the first. It will have the viewer lie down on a 4’x4’ plank on wheels and will move like a roller creeper that (DIY) mechanics use to get under a car.The viewer will look up up at a projection screen with the projector near their head. The usb camera will be on the same end of the projector, mounted on an aluminum horizontal speed rail, which is perpendicular to the four vertical speed rails holding the rear projection screen. There will be two speakers on two of the vertical speed rails outputting the sound.

The third movable machine will be the most ergonomically complex. To move, the viewer pulls down on ropes on one end of the structure, allowing the back end to be lifted and the structure to be moved off the two front wheels. The viewer is looking forward into a mirror which reflects off another mirror reflecting off three monitors lying flat on the bottom of the structure. The three cameras are at the other end of the machine pointing in the opposite direction of the viewer. There are three Raspberry Pi computers (single board computers half the size of a NUC), one for each monitor, camera, amplifier, speaker, and color trigger and corresponding video.

On the walls will be three colored triggers, one on each wall except the wall with the entrance to the gallery. The green color trigger will be from the green screen used as backdrop for the shooting of the videos. The red color trigger will be from a steel sheet spray painted red, that I use as a part of music performance in my videos. The blue color trigger is from a flat expanded steel sheet spray painted blue that corresponds to structural perforation used in the cinematography of the videos.

The videos will portray the rhythmic sacrifice of technologies that represent our contemporary technocratic culture (car parts, television, computer, camera, smartphone, electronics, etc). The rhythms will be in syncopation with light bulbs in the video connecting time, speed, modernity, and transgression of utility, in order to express the inevitability of entropy.

Conclusion

An important parallel I want to conclude with is that of George Bataille’s general economy, an economy that squanders its wealth in the act of giving, to that of the open-source and DIY models of information giving. This is significant because Bataille attributes this to the energy excess that spills out of a system, an expression of entropy that manifests as giving.Technology perpetuates the ethos for which it is wielded, therefore, technologyfrom the open-source and DIY communities perpetuate the ethos of Bataille’s general economy: giving without expecting return as an expression of energetic excess.

The universe is slowly tearing itself apart in which we observe as entropy (0e), and the self organization that occurs is, for humans, the ethos of civilizations. Because of this, civilizations construct their moral prerogatives for which individuals are to abide by to combat the entropy of the universe (0f).As an artist endowed with an energetic excess, I aim to align myself with Bataille’s general economy, to not seek out a return for the giving of my creative energy, but to give freely through an art installation for others to experience.

My methods to do this are to explore the installation space as a network of cinematic screens ergonomically engaged with the viewers’ bodies. The ability to build a complex interaction of machines using DIY and open-source technology explores new potentials to how we understand the interplay of entropy and technology. The cumulative effect I aim to express with these potentials is the act of consummation, of squandering energy and resources as an end in itself, analogous to the foundation of religious impulse. For it is a circumstance of energetic excess found uniquely in humans (as far as we know), and perpetuates the will to create.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

0a) Batailles, Georges “Erotism: Death and Sensuality”, 1962 Walker and Co. New York